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Nine Life Lessons from Jane Eyre

1. Maintain your freedom: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

2. How you feel is more important than looking respectable: “I would always rather be happy than dignified.”

3. Ugly people have feelings too: “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.

4. Loving yourself is important: “If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”

5. Like it’s really really really important: “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

6. You don’t have to listen to people because they are older: “I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”

7. Something isn’t right just because everyone else is doing it: “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.”

8. Try not to hold grudges: “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”

9. When it comes to flirting, use it or lose it: “Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.”

I’ve never read Jane Eyre but I’ve seen at least 3 film adaptations (my sister LOVES the book and I watched all the films with her), and this is the first thing I’ve seen that actually tempts me to read it. Great post!